Risky business: insuring against the future
Life is risky - which is why people buy insurance. But when disaster overwhelms conventional insurance systems, should the state step in? In this program, economics expert Niall Ferguson travels to post-Katrina New Orleans to evaluate the free marke...
Blowing bubbles: The emergence of stock trading
Why do stock markets produce bubbles, and what makes them burst? In this program, financial scholar Niall Ferguson examines the origins of the joint stock company and the modern share trading system, highlighting some of history's most notorious mar...
Civilization: Is the West History? - Episode 5: Consumerism
Today the world is becoming more homogenous and, with increasingly few exceptions, big-name brands dominate main streets, high streets and shopping malls all over the globe.
We dress the same; we want the same latest technological kit; we drive the...
Civilization: Is the West History? - Episode 6: Work
The sixth element that enabled the West to dominate the rest was the work ethic. Max Weber famously linked it to Protestantism, but the reality is that any culture, regardless of religion, is capable of embracing the spirit of capitalism by working ...
Civilization: Is the West History? - Episode 2: Science
In 1683 the Ottoman army laid siege to Vienna, the capital of Europe's most powerful empire. Domination of West by East was an alarmingly plausible scenario. But Islam was defeated: not so much by firepower as by science.
Niall Ferguson asks why th...
Civilization: Is the West History? - Episode 3: Property
Professor Ferguson asks why North America succeeded while South America for so many centuries lagged behind.
The two had much in common (not least the subjugation of indigenous peoples and the use of slavery by European immigrants), but they differ...
Civilization: Is the West History? - Episode 4: Medicine
Niall Ferguson looks at how late 19th-century advances in modern medicine made it possible to export Western civilization to the 'Dark Continent': Africa.
The French Empire consciously set out to civilize West Africa by improving public health as w...
Civilization: Is the West History? - Episode 1: Competition
The first program in the series begins in 1420 when Ming China had a credible claim to be the most advanced civilization in the world: 'All Under Heaven'. England on the eve of the Wars of the Roses would have seemed quite primitive by contrast. Yet...
Dreams of avarice: credit and interest through the ages
From "promises to pay" on ancient Babylonian tablets to the insolvency of present-day consumerist America, this program explains the origins of credit and debt and why credit networks are central to civilization. Historian Niall Ferguson examines fi...
Chimerica: an economic love story gone sour
How did the American credit market become so entwined with - and dependent on - Chinese lending? This program examines the rise and potential decline of "Chimerica," the financial marriage between two of the world's biggest economic powers. Historia...